ict4peace foundation's 2011 year end report
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Who we are and what we doICT4Peace took root in 2003
with a pioneering research on
the role of ICTs in preventing,
responding to and recovering
from conflict that led, two years
laters to the adoption of
Paragraph 36 of the Tunis
Commitment by the World
Summit on the Information
Society .
ICT4Peace is a policy and
action-oriented international
Foundation that explores and
champions the use of
Information Communications
Technology (ICT) for crisis
management, humanitarian aid
and peace-building.
Since its creation as a
Foundation in spring 2006, it
offers insights, strategic guidance
and conduct after-action reviews
of ICTs designed and deployed
for such purposes. It aims to
facilitate effective and sustained
communication between
peoples, communities and
stakeholders in all stages of crisis
management.
The ICT4Peace Foundation
focuses on original research and
policy development, advocacy on
key issues, advisory services and
training as well as targeted
networking.
The Foundation works on:
Raising awareness about the
contribution and potential of
ICT in crisis management.
Fostering the exchange of best
practices in the field of ICT
for crisis management.
Contributing to the
establishment of broad
principles derived from
operational best practices, help
integrate them into UN and
multi-stakeholder processes
and make ICT part of UN
and global multi-stake-holder
evaluation exercises.
Develop and implement
ICT4Peace Training Modules
for integrated and multi-
stakeholder peacekeeping and
peace-building missions.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland,
the ICT4Peace Foundation is
funded by the Swiss Government
as well as private Foundations
ICT4PEACEFOUNDATION
Workove
r2011
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and individual donors. It has established close partnerships with many global institutions, organizations
and agencies, both at the highest level of policy development and at the implementation level in the
field.
The Foundation's Advisory Board consists of a Nobel Peace Laureate, senior diplomats, world-
renowned practitioners, industry and domain experts, academics and researchers in the use of ICTs for
peace-building and humanitarian aid. The Board members are increasingly called on by the
Foundation to participate in the outreach and policy development work.
To learn more about the ICT4Peace Foundation, its history, its partners, its initiatives, visit
www.ict4peace.org.
Cover image shows the Ushahidi instance set up to monitor Tunisias historic
democratic elections in 2011. Under the leadership of Kamal Sedra, ICT4Peace Senior TechnicalAdvisor from Egypt, the ICT4Peace experts Eya Lahmar and Khaled Koubaa from Tunisia, Imad
Bazzi from Lebanon and Farid Boushra from Egypt installed the Ushahidi platform and trained the
mappers and verificators at ISIE headquarters.
For more details click on http://ict4peace.org/updates/monitoring-tunisias-first-election-ict4peace-
foundation-instance-superieure-independante-pour-les-elections
Who we are and what we do
ICCM 2011
The ICT4PeaceFoundation and theEuropeanCommissions JointResearch Centre(JRC), in collaborationwith the InternationalNetwork of CrisisMappers successfullyorganised and co-hosted the 3rdInternational
Conference on CrisisMapping (ICCM). Formore details, pleaseclickhttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-geneva
http://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/successful-hosting-of-3rd-international-conference-on-crisis-mapping-iccm-in-genevahttp://ict4peace.org/updates/monitoring-tunisias-first-election-ict4peace-foundation-instance-superieure-independante-pour-les-electionshttp://ict4peace.org/updates/monitoring-tunisias-first-election-ict4peace-foundation-instance-superieure-independante-pour-les-electionshttp://ict4peace.org/updates/monitoring-tunisias-first-election-ict4peace-foundation-instance-superieure-independante-pour-les-electionshttp://ict4peace.org/updates/monitoring-tunisias-first-election-ict4peace-foundation-instance-superieure-independante-pour-les-electionshttp://www.ict4peace.org/http://www.ict4peace.org/ -
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The ICT4Peace Foundation has
established a long-term and trusted
relationship with the UN and its
various agencies. It is the leading
partner of UN DESA for the
implementation and monitoring of
Paragraphe 36 of the Tunis
Commitment of the WSIS.
Based on its 2008 report on
Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information
Management Activities, Capabilities
and Best Practice, the Foundation has
supported the UN Office of
Information and Communications
Technology (OICT) in successfullycompleting the UN Crisis
Information Management Strategy
(CIMS) in August 2009.
Supporting the implementation of the UN Crisis
Information Management Strategy
The UN CIMS is based on the recognition that governments,
the UN, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), non-
governmental organizations, business and media have
significant experience in crisis response. Yet, no single agency,
department or actor has the capacity or sole mandate to
address these crises.
This makes it vital that everyone involved in disaster
prevention and response harmonise the use of tools and
systems to produce, disseminate and archive information in a
manner that can be scaled up or rapidly focused to deal with
any type of crisis.
The CIM strategy is helping all actors, including the UNs
member states and agencies, to deal with all stages of a crisis
lifecycle more efficiently and effectively. It covers data
architecture, technology development, stakeholder
management and capacity building issues.
ICT4Peace facilitates consultations and meetings on these
key issues to help the UN in implementing the CIMS. Today
the Crisis Information Management Advisory Group
(CIMAG ), has become a unique platform for reflection,
exchange on best practice and coordination. CIMAG
meetings, workshops and retreats are regularly convened and
chaired by the Foundation on behalf of the UN/OICT.
Improving humanitarian information sharing
It is today clear that ICTs, new and social media as well as
crowd-sourcing offer great potential to strengthen planning
and delivery of aid. Already in 2007, the ICT4Peace
Foundation signed a partnership with the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). It
participated in the organisation of the Global Symposium +5
that brought together a community of practice on
humanitarian information and knowledge.
The Foundation and the Swiss Government supported
OCHA in building The Humanitarian Response Common
and Operational Datasets (CODs) Registry to make critical
information during a humanitarian crisis available to the
public.
Ever since, the cooperation between the Foundation and
OCHA has been growing on various fronts, including a
participation in the evaluation of the OCHA OneResponse
humanitarian web site.
Fostering cross-fertilization with crisis mappers
In 2010 the Foundation invited UN/OICT to participate at
the Crisis Mappers Meeting in Boston and to thus embrace
an increasingly important community of actors in crisis
information management. The Foundation was the first
organization to publish a report on how to support cross-
fertilization between the UN Interagency StandingCommittee (IASC) Core Operational Data Sets (COD) and
Information generated by Crisis Mappers during a given
crisis.
In 2011, the ICT4Peace Foundation co-hosted with the Swiss
Confederation and the European Commissions Joint
Research Center the 3rd International Conference of Crisis
Mappers (ICCM) in Geneva in November.
The purpose of ICCM 2011 was to bring together the most
engaged practitioners, scholars, software developers and
policymakers at the cutting edge of crisis mapping to addressand assess the role of crisis mapping and humanitarian
technology in crisis response.
Strengthening Crisis InformationManagement at the United Nations
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Beyond research and policy development,the ICT4Peace Foundation carries out anumber of activities. It develops andsupports innovative processes, theinventorisation of ICTs related topeacebuilding and humanitarian aid andcountry or crisis specific wikis.
Beyond research and policy development, the ICT4Peace
Foundation carries out a number of activities. It develops and
supports innovative online tools such as the CrisisInformation Management Platform or the inventorisation
and country specific Wikis. It also offers advisory services and
training in cooperation with various partners involved in
conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peace-building. And to
further raise awareness about ICT in crisis management, the
Foundations team members organise or contribute to a
variety of global and regional events such as conferences,
workshops, webinars, lectures and presentations.
The ICT4Peace Matrix empowers Ushahidi
Ushahidi is a crowd-sourced information management
platform that relays vital information to decision makers in
crises. After its initial support to Ushahidi through financing
and intellectual input in 2009, the ICT4Peace Foundation
contributed to develop a plug-in, called the Matrix, to
validate information generated from the ground.
Fully integrated into Ushahidis open source web platform, it
was used successfully in the Egyptian parliamentary elections
of 2010.
The use of crowdsourcing supported by the Matrix is being
discussed with a number of partners in countries such as
Kirgystan, Egypt, Tunisia, Marocco, Somalia and Columbia.
ICT4Peace also plans to use this new functionality for crisis
simulation exercises, disaster preparedness and risk reduction
planning, as well as for other crisis information management
training purposes and field pilots.
Crowdsourcing applied during the Tunisia 2011
elections
The latest upgraded version of the Matrix was effectively
used during the Tunisian elections in October 2011. The
ICT4 Peace Foundation was mandated by the Ministry of
Interior of Tunisia and Committee for the Supervision of the
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Elections to carry out, with Ushahidi, the development and
implementation of a dedicated crowd-sourcing-based security
incidents monitoring and follow-up Platform.
Content rich Wikis boost crisis information on the
webIn 2007, the ICT4Peace Foundation launched its
inventorisation wiki to catalogue existing ICT tools and
mechanisms operational, legal and conceptual related to
conflict early warning, mitigation, transformation and post-
conflict recovery.
It offers a collection of unique and
widely acclaimed wikis geared
towards the humanitarian aid
community as well as media and
policy makers. They feature vital
information from government, the
UN system in the disaster / crisis
stricken area, other NGOs, the
World Bank, as well as
comprehensive situation reports,
mapping information and GIS data,
photos & videos, who/what/where
information and links to domestic
and international media coverage.
The Wikis are constantly updated,
curated and maintained by the
Foundation. In 2010, the
ICT4Peace Wikis covered the Haitiand Chile earthquakes, the Pakistan
floods, the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the
riots in South Kyrgyzstan. Early 2011, a Wiki focused on the
Libyan unrest. To follow up the latest ICT4Peace Wikis visit:
http://wiki.ict4peace.org.
Training key stakeholders in crisis information
management
There is a general consensus among the peacekeeping,
peace-building and humanitarian assistance community that
there is a crucial need to foster and encourage
communication and information exchange as well as a
culture of cross-professional cooperation and partnership
among all stakeholders military, police and civilian - taking
part in peacekeeping & peace-building, humanitarian &
crisis management operations.
To develop and implement training programs that serve thisvision of shared learning, the ICT4Peace Foundation has
established initial partnerships with the Cairo Regional
Center for Training on Conflict Resolution & Peacekeeping
in Africa (CCCPA), the Ecole pour le Maintien de la Paix,
(EMP) in Mali and the Kofi Annan International
Peacekeeping Training Center (KAIPTC), in Accra, Ghana.
Today the Foundation develops and carries out training
courses in Crisis Information Management (CIM) for multi-
dimensional and multi-stakeholders missions in peacekeeping
and peace-building.
The content is anchored to new dimensions in peacekeeping
and disaster management, including harnessing the potential
of new media, the web, Internet and mobile technologies for
increased situation awareness. So far Crisis Information
ICT4Peace in action
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Management training courses
were developed and
implemented for staff
members of Joint Mission
Analysis Centres (JMAC) and
for humanitarian operations
managers as part of the
Executive Master Programme
for Humanitarian Logistics
and Management of the
University of Lugano,
Switzerland.
ICT4Peace also participated,
with the case of the Haiti
Earthquake, in the ISCRAMSummer School on
Humanitarian Information
Management and Logistics in
Tilburg, The Netherlands.
The Foundation also entered a
partnership with Folke
Bernadotte Foundation,
Zentrum fr Internationalen
Friedensdienst, the Crisis
Management Centre of
Finland and APSTA todevelop the JMAC-CiM Pilot
Training course at CCCPA in
Cairo. Together with its
partners, the Foundation conducted a first of its kind training
course on CIM for African Peacekeeping and Peace-building
missions using ICT and new media in October 2011.
It aims to develop African capacities for peace operations and
to strengthen the skills and capabilities of present and future
senior level staff of UN, African Union and other mission
analysis centres, be they civilian, military or police. The
course also demonstrates the opportunities and challenges of
ICTs and new media tools while providing reality base
simulation exercises. Others partners in training projects are
the Peacekeeping School of Bamako, Chilean Joint
Peacekeeping Operations Centre, UN OCHA, UNITAR and
DPKO.
In autumn 2011, the Foundation also designed and delivered
a tailored training program to the local crisis mappers and
supervision teams in preparation of the Tunisia elections on
23rd October 2011.
Developing advisory and cooperation partnerships
Since its creation in 2006, the ICT4 Peace Foundation has
developed winning partnerships with a variety of
organizations such as ITU GCA HLEG, Geneva Security
Forum, GCSP, Gulf Research Institute, Strategic Foresight
Group, the Institute for Diplomatic Studies of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the Arab Republic of Egypt, WHO
Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross, ETH
Zrich to name just a few.
Thanks to the close relationship of the Foundation with
former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, joint projects are
regularly developed with his Crisis Management Initiative
(CMI), such as the publication of PeaceIT, an online journal
and an upcoming workshop on ICT and Conflict Mediation.
In November 2010, the Foundation participated in the Early
Warning for Protection Conference in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia. The focus was on how private, public and civil
society institutions can harness early warning ICTs and
mechanisms to contribute to the prevention of mass atrocity
crimes. The Foundation issued a report on what is being
done to support the prevention of mass atrocity crimes as
well as reconciliation, healing and justice. It led to an
informal advisory partnership with the UN Special Advisor
on the Prevention of Genocide to explore the utilisation of
ICTs for early warning.
ICT4Peace in action
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Raising awareness about ICT and crisis
management
The Foundation is present and active in many events,
conferences, workshops (including panels at the 2010 & 2011
WSIS Forums), webinars, lectures and presentations around
the issues of crisis information management and ICTs.
All its reports as well as partners reports are published on
www.ict4peace.org, the Foundations official web site that
registers today more than 38000 visits from 184 countries in
the world. Naturally the Foundation is active on Facebook
and Twitter. Its activities are also regularly covered by
mainstream and specialised media.
Furthermore, the Foundations team is regularly invited to
speak about its various initiatives and research in a number of
events and locations worldwide. Early 2011, it launched with
the Harvard Berkman Center Geogiatech the first edition of
the ICT4Peace Paper Series: Peace-building in the Information
Age: Sifting Hype from Reality.
ICT4Peace in action
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It is now a given that ICTs are front and centre in
crisis prevention and management as well as in
relief and aid work, irrespective of the nature of
the disaster and where it occurs.
Several significant challenges remain. Issues of
sustainability, clear relationships with the United
Nations, Governments, the role of crisis mapping
in complex political emergencies, ownership and
use of data, data architecture, and stakeholder
management are some of these.
Today, the CIMs process is well recognized within
the UN system, and has moved from championing
the use of ICT in relief work to championing a
more robust framework for their adoption and use.
Senior leadership in many agencies are embracing
social networking and web-based tools, but this is
still haphazard, with little or no organizational
vision. Interoperability is still an issuedata
created in some platforms, no matter how good
they are, are still difficult to export and use in
other systems. Financial and knowledge resources
to train information management workers,
especially at the field level, remain scarce.
The Foundations engagement with UN agencies
over the years on CIM suggests enduring
challenges over data sharing between the crisismapping community, which is itself fractured, and
United Nations agencies. With ICT constantly
evolving, the UN system needs to remain agile and
aware of how these technologies can help prevent,
mitigate, and respond to crises.
The ICT4Peace Foundation will therefore
continue to support the CIMS process and the
international community at large, to improve and
sharpen the collective response to crisis and foster
better information management and data sharing.
Capacity building and tailored training
development is another path on which the
Foundation has made good progress, with a range
of successful field experiences.
The Tunisia elections in October 2011 gave the
Foundation the opportunity to demonstrate its
ability to develop and implement focused training
modules in crisis information management.
The Foundation will continue to design, test and
implement tailored training programs in crisis
information management targeted to the
peacekeeping, peace-building and humanitarian
assistance community. It will encourage cross-operation sharing of knowledge and best practice
and support all constituents in better coordinating
their efforts before, during and after a crisis.
The ICT4Peace Wikis have proven their
effectiveness and will be enriched with on the
The Tunisia elections in October 2011gave the Foundation the opportunityto demonstrate its ability to develop
and implement focused trainingmodules in crisis informationmanagement.
Looking to the future
UN and CIMS
The ICT4PeaceFoundation willtherefore continue tosupport the CIMS
process and theinternationalcommunity at large, toimprove and sharpenthe collectiveresponse to crisis andfoster betterinformationmanagement anddata sharing.
See http://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-management
http://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-managementhttp://ict4peace.org/category/whatwedo/crisis-information-management -
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pulse verified data and content. Through them ICT4 Peace is
not only on the forefront of global crisis information sharing
but also setting a benchmark in publication and dynamic
information aggregation from a variety of sources.
The Foundation will continue to develop its Wikis and
demonstrate that abundance of new information sources will
improve crisis information management for the international
community.
Cooperation with partners such as Ushahidi will also be
strengthened in order to support and broaden the use of
crowd sourcing and crisis mapping for prevention,
management and monitoring of various events. The Matrix
plug-in will be further enhanced and implemented.
The Foundation aims to respond to real needs and to develop
solutions that have a direct implication, at policy level and in
the field, on the efficiency and effectiveness of all
stakeholders i.e. the UN and its agencies, governments,
businesses, civil society and NGOs. With the Foundations
support and knowledge, their collective response to crisis
management, natural and manmade crisis will continue to
improve.
In order to concretize the evidence of its vision and mission
in CIM, the Foundation will selectively enter into more and
more concrete projects, thus demonstrating in the field the
validity of its purpose
We believe we can build stronger and more resilient societies
while enabling in particular young people to move from
economic despair to a positive contribution for business and
society. Through ICT4Peace they can become the pillars of
their respective communities and countries and take up the
challenge of a more peaceful future.
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Image below taken at ICCM 2010 in Boston, with members of the
ICT4Peace Foundation, Ushahidi and the UNs CITO.
Looking to the future
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The ICT4Peace Foundation expresses its deep gratitude to the Swiss Government (Amb. Thomas Greminger, Amb. Claude
Wild, Col Jacques Baud, Ms. Claudia Moser, Ms. Claudia Rizzo, Secretary of State Peter Maurer and Matthias Bachmann,
Swiss Mission to UN in New York, Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs) and the Karl Popper Foundation. Without
their political, intellectual and financial support the work would have been impossible.
Special thanks also goes to UN/CITO Dr. Soon-hong Choi, President Martti Ahtisaari, Chairman of the ICT4Peace Policy
Advisory Board and Kristiina Rintakoski, Maria Cattaui and Alain Modoux, founding members of the ICT4Peace
Foundation Board, Gen. Satish Nambiar, Lin Wells, Nitin Desai, Kamal Sedra, Sanjana Hattotuwa, Barbara Weekes and
Dag Nielsen, Special and Senior Advisors of the Foundation, Matthias Wevelsiep from the Crisis Management Initiative and
last but not least Mme. Nicole Piaget, Head of Administration, ICT4Peace Foundation.
To learn more the people at the ICT4Peace Foundation, visit http://ict4peace.org/whoweare/our-people
Thanks
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UN CITO Office of the UN Chief Information Technology OfficerDPKO Department of Peace-Keeping OperationsDPA Department for Political AffairsIASC Interagency Standing CommitteeIFI International Financial InstitutionsOCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian AffairsUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNHCR UN High Commissioner for RefugeesUNITAR UN Institute for Training and ResearchWFP World Food Programme
Some abbreviations